Such a law illustrates the beauty of federalism. Texas and other states can have them if they want them! Maine has not nearly as much space and much more natural beauty to protect [per square mile], so it can and maybe should have a different set of rules. That's cool.
This is a recipe for creating dead retiree states. Just NIMBY everything, NIMBY the power sources[1] [2], then complain about a lack of power so NIMBY any type of new industrial .
Now do this for housing, new sources of water anything a person younger than 40 would need and you basically get a state full of retirees..and oh would you look at that! [3].
Now the question is, why wouldn't all states eventually do this with the way our population pyramid is looking? It's basically rabid conservation and tragedy of the commons writ large.
It's the opposite of NIMBY. It's smart thoughtful policy and it is NOT a simple ban. Nobody bothers to read passed the title but the main piece of this legislation is the creation of the Maine Data Center Coordination Council.
Alongside it is a temporary (until Nov 2027) moratorium on data centers over 20 megawatts. This seems to be in place so they could establish a proper legal and environmental framework for building out data centers in the future.
This is exactly the kind of approach to legislation we should all hope our local representatives are competent enough to do.
Maine is far from being a nimby state, apart from the 30% expansion rule for houses <250ft from water, there is basically no zoning across the entire state and a fly by night hot dog diner could go up next to your million dollar cottage if it wanted to.
California on the other hand… but they are clearly far from becoming a “dead state”
> This is a recipe for creating dead retiree states.
This too is the beauty of federalism. You want to live in a dead retiree state? You can. You want to live in a bustling industrial district? You can too. As long as you do things through proper democratic channels.
> Now do this for housing
But this bill is not about housing. This response makes as much sense as responding to a new law legalizing marijuana and saying "now do this for heroin, rape and murder."
Is your argument that we should ignore the will of the people? Because this is what the people of Maine want. Why exactly should Maine be forced to have data centers in it when its citizens don't want that?
I live in Maine. Commercial power is crazy expensive. I don't know why you would build an AI datacenter here in the first place. As an obsessive self-hoster, I've researched building one, and there is no universe in which it makes sense. New Hampshire and Massachusetts are so nearby latency-wise.
This is a natural response to the excessive pushiness and underhandedness that's been used to build many of these new datacenters, often in direct conflict with the wishes of the locals. Maybe the firms paying to get them built should take a more diplomatic approach instead of trying to railroad projects through.
I feel like this is always the case with new technology. People had the same reaction to the invention of the printing press. New is scary. It doesn't mean there aren't valid concerns, but unfortunately this feels a bit like an inevitability. The focus shouldn't be on stopping it, but how to maximize the gains and minimize the losses to the local communities where these are being built.
It explains the intent (to protect consumers/grid from price changes and fluctuation), and bans 20MW+ loads. They forgot to define load, so a behind-the-meter datacenter (zero net load on the grid) still would likely not get permitted even though it does not violate the intent of the law, which is a bit odd.
For people who support this kind of ban, I'd ask if you would support a similar ban on new factories for, say, car parts.
Like data centers, factories use a lot of power -- which drives up electricity bills -- and their construction can have local environmental impacts. Data centers have a reputation for not providing too many local jobs, but modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many local jobs.
If, given all that, you'd support factory construction but not data center construction, I'd be curious as to why.
I keep seeing people mention NIMBY. Maine is NOT California. For Mainers, Maine IS the backyard. They also have explicit laws saying you can break into someone’s cabin if they aren’t there and your life depends on it, and laws against billboards. They live life differently than you and the parallels are not there.
Most people there seriously don’t give a shit about AI. They care about maintaining the peace, quiet, and purity of their land. Because they enjoy it.
Many of you miss the perspective because you’ve never been there.
From the bill text establishing a council to figure it out:
> The council shall evaluate issues related to data centers located or proposed to be located in the State, with the goals of protecting ratepayers, maintaining electric grid reliability, minimizing environmental impacts and enabling responsible and appropriately sited economic development.
Hate to sound all California, but some restrictions on datacenters and similar power/water users seem reasonable. Datacenters in particular vs. factories because of the nature of datacenter inputs and outputs.
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Will the DC cover the costs of its own expanded power generation needs? Are residential and small business users protected?
Can the water system handle the increased usage in a given area?
What physical discharges are created? Waste heat air, waste heat water, etc?
What kind of noise will be generated? Are there limits on use of onsite fossil fuel power generation?
Why? Why are progressive being regressive about this? What exactly is so wrong with data centers? They use electricity? Then just demand more power plants not some NIMBY bullshit that will just result in data centers being made in other countries. It’s not like they’re polluting anything. What exactly is so terrible about servers running quietly in a building.
Seems like a reasonable temporary measure for a state with poor infrastructure.
...temporarily blocking permits for any new data center requiring more than 20
megawatts. The measure runs until November 2027, buying time for a new Data
Center Coordination Council to study how these facilities strain Maine’s
aging electrical grid.
How long until the AI companies start charging more to people who use AI services, but live in areas that do things like this?
NIMBY causes energy prices to go up in areas that won't allow drilling, refining, nuclear or nat gas development, or power lines. When will the same happen for things like AI services?
data centers drive up the cost of power. basic supply and demand.
instead of blocking data centers, we need to scale up energy production. the solution is to get rid of all the red tape that makes it so impossible to build in America.
quality of life metrics are highly correlated to the availability of energy.
In terms of square footage there are few "businesses" which consume more resources (water, power, tax credits) and produce less onging local employment. More states and municipalities are going to do this, and rightly so.
I understand the resistance to data centers. They have local environmental impacts, raise energy prices, and generally funnel wealth away from the area. But that's not inherit - it's the result of policies and subsidies.
Instead of banning, why not put the REAL price tag on it? Require local employment. Stop subsidizing infrastructure. Start taxing them. If a data center came in and provided jobs, paid their own way without handouts, and lowered electricity costs, it might be a different story.
It's not data centers per se. It's the crony capitalism that subsidizes them and lets them extract wealth without oversight. Regulate it properly and the negative characteristics go away. And yes, putting the actual price tag on it might scare away most investors - an effective ban. But that's the market working efficiently on price signals.
The people (through their elected representatives) have a right to do this. It is stupid, in my opinion, but they have every right to do so. If this is what they want, they should have it.
Personally, I see little reason to ban new taxpayers with few-to-none negative externalities from moving into your state, but what do i know?
This has gotta be the dumbest issue in politics today. By far, the biggest use of data centers right now is on streaming Netflix and YouTube and stuff, but you don't see any protests about that.
> The bill gained traction after residents in Wiscasset and Lewiston successfully opposed data center proposals over water usage and safety concerns.
"Water usage" and especially "safety" are bullshit arguments against building new data centers - in particular the idea that data centers use a lot of water was popularized by the freelance prestige journalist Karen Hao, who got a lot of her facts egregiouly, sloppily wrong in her reporting about AI data centers. This is either retarded environmentalism unconcerned with facts; or the actual motivation to prevent data center construction is some kind of more nebulous distrust of big tech or AI companies or concern that AI will take people's jobs.
This shouldn't be read as a carefully considered policy with upsides and downsides. It's obviously silly to just ban datacenters from a policy perspective.
Read this instead as, people hate this shit. They don't want datacenters, they don't want AI, they don't feel like those things are doing anything for them.
You will win the policy debate by saying:
"a datacenter uses just as much electricity and provides just as many jobs as a car parts factory, so it's silly to ban the one and not the other when you can just as easily examine the externalities of the datacenter and blah blah blah"
But you will be missing the point, which is that people see building car parts as a solid, upstanding thing which has tangible and direct benefits to people; whereas building an AI datacenter means allowing some rich California surveillance czar to suck the water and power from your local community so that they can steal your job, fracture your community, and impoverish your family. One is good and one is bad and the voter's choice is to do the good thing and not the bad thing.
Even if car parts factories pollute more than datacenters do.
442 comments
Now do this for housing, new sources of water anything a person younger than 40 would need and you basically get a state full of retirees..and oh would you look at that! [3].
Now the question is, why wouldn't all states eventually do this with the way our population pyramid is looking? It's basically rabid conservation and tragedy of the commons writ large.
[1]: https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2025-04-08/bill-removin...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/maine-voters-reject-q...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Alongside it is a temporary (until Nov 2027) moratorium on data centers over 20 megawatts. This seems to be in place so they could establish a proper legal and environmental framework for building out data centers in the future.
This is exactly the kind of approach to legislation we should all hope our local representatives are competent enough to do.
California on the other hand… but they are clearly far from becoming a “dead state”
> This is a recipe for creating dead retiree states.
This too is the beauty of federalism. You want to live in a dead retiree state? You can. You want to live in a bustling industrial district? You can too. As long as you do things through proper democratic channels.
> Now do this for housing
But this bill is not about housing. This response makes as much sense as responding to a new law legalizing marijuana and saying "now do this for heroin, rape and murder."
All you get is ugly industrial sprawl.
Why would anyone want to go to Texas to build a datacenter and worry about the cooling, when they could pick any other state?
https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/638FA4CD35438/media%2FF5jNt...
It explains the intent (to protect consumers/grid from price changes and fluctuation), and bans 20MW+ loads. They forgot to define load, so a behind-the-meter datacenter (zero net load on the grid) still would likely not get permitted even though it does not violate the intent of the law, which is a bit odd.
Like data centers, factories use a lot of power -- which drives up electricity bills -- and their construction can have local environmental impacts. Data centers have a reputation for not providing too many local jobs, but modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many local jobs.
If, given all that, you'd support factory construction but not data center construction, I'd be curious as to why.
Most people there seriously don’t give a shit about AI. They care about maintaining the peace, quiet, and purity of their land. Because they enjoy it.
Many of you miss the perspective because you’ve never been there.
Given that, the bill is just for show, and not actually serious.
> The council shall evaluate issues related to data centers located or proposed to be located in the State, with the goals of protecting ratepayers, maintaining electric grid reliability, minimizing environmental impacts and enabling responsible and appropriately sited economic development.
https://legislature.maine.gov/legis/bills/getPDF.asp?paper=H...
For a known amount of data enter power, dedicate 125% of power in solar and battery.
Need cooling? Use liquid geothermal loops. Or radiate energy back into space. We know frequencies that do not reflect in atmo.
Acoustic pollution is another area. Acoustic tiles, building plans, and natural noise barriers are also of utmost importance too.
We need more compute. Plain banning is not the way. Demanding highly ecological and conserving solutions is.
---
Will the DC cover the costs of its own expanded power generation needs? Are residential and small business users protected?
Can the water system handle the increased usage in a given area?
What physical discharges are created? Waste heat air, waste heat water, etc?
What kind of noise will be generated? Are there limits on use of onsite fossil fuel power generation?
NIMBY causes energy prices to go up in areas that won't allow drilling, refining, nuclear or nat gas development, or power lines. When will the same happen for things like AI services?
instead of blocking data centers, we need to scale up energy production. the solution is to get rid of all the red tape that makes it so impossible to build in America.
quality of life metrics are highly correlated to the availability of energy.
Does the move benefit companies with existing DCs whose competition can no longer establish a region there?
Instead of banning, why not put the REAL price tag on it? Require local employment. Stop subsidizing infrastructure. Start taxing them. If a data center came in and provided jobs, paid their own way without handouts, and lowered electricity costs, it might be a different story.
It's not data centers per se. It's the crony capitalism that subsidizes them and lets them extract wealth without oversight. Regulate it properly and the negative characteristics go away. And yes, putting the actual price tag on it might scare away most investors - an effective ban. But that's the market working efficiently on price signals.
Personally, I see little reason to ban new taxpayers with few-to-none negative externalities from moving into your state, but what do i know?
Maine will go bankrupt? Maine will turn into a barren backwater? There will be no jobs?
> The bill gained traction after residents in Wiscasset and Lewiston successfully opposed data center proposals over water usage and safety concerns.
"Water usage" and especially "safety" are bullshit arguments against building new data centers - in particular the idea that data centers use a lot of water was popularized by the freelance prestige journalist Karen Hao, who got a lot of her facts egregiouly, sloppily wrong in her reporting about AI data centers. This is either retarded environmentalism unconcerned with facts; or the actual motivation to prevent data center construction is some kind of more nebulous distrust of big tech or AI companies or concern that AI will take people's jobs.
Read this instead as, people hate this shit. They don't want datacenters, they don't want AI, they don't feel like those things are doing anything for them.
You will win the policy debate by saying:
"a datacenter uses just as much electricity and provides just as many jobs as a car parts factory, so it's silly to ban the one and not the other when you can just as easily examine the externalities of the datacenter and blah blah blah"
But you will be missing the point, which is that people see building car parts as a solid, upstanding thing which has tangible and direct benefits to people; whereas building an AI datacenter means allowing some rich California surveillance czar to suck the water and power from your local community so that they can steal your job, fracture your community, and impoverish your family. One is good and one is bad and the voter's choice is to do the good thing and not the bad thing.
Even if car parts factories pollute more than datacenters do.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/25/datacenters-...
Nice to see some success for their ideas.